Film Reviews
First Cow review - beautifully realised frontier dramaFriday, 28 May 2021
Kelly Reichardt is one of America’s most distinctive directors, whose meticulously detailed, character and place-driven dramas have a lowkey vibe that belies their impact. Read more... |
Frankie review - dying for nuanceThursday, 27 May 2021
American filmmaker Ira Sachs excels at crafting throughtful relationship dramas in which middle-class characters confronted with crises or unanticipated realisations gain valuable emotional knowledge. His best works – Forty Shades of Blue (2005), Keep the Lights On (2012), and Little Men (2016) – demonstrate an evenness and maturity rare in the rough and tumble of indie cinema. Read more... |
Cruella review - fabulous fashions, creaky narrativeThursday, 27 May 2021
Is Cruella the escapist blockbuster the Covid-blighted world has been waiting for? Well, it’s a feast for the eyes but 20 minutes too long, and for an origin story of the despicable Cruella De Vil of The Hundred and One Dalmations fame, it lacks the killer instinct when it comes to the crunch. Read more... |
My New York Year review - lacklustre portrait of an ingenueSaturday, 22 May 2021
This pallid chick flick limps out on release having changed its title since its Berlinale 2020 debut; in the US it's known as My Salinger Year, but perhaps market research in Blighty decreed that name-checking the author of The Catcher in the Rye wouldn't play as well here. Read more... |
Those Who Wish Me Dead review - Angelina Jolie battles baddies and blazes in MontanaFriday, 21 May 2021
With a track record which includes both Sicario movies, Hell or High Water and Wind River, Taylor Sheridan packs some muscle in the action-thriller department, though Those Who Wish Me Dead can’t match those previous highlights. Read more... |
Nomadland review - on the road in the American WestFriday, 21 May 2021
Fern (a luminous Frances McDormand) used to work in HR. Now, aged 62, she’s harvesting sugarbeets, hauling rocks, cleaning toilets in a trailer park and doing shifts in an Amazon warehouse. And she’s living out of her camper van, a shabby, lovingly restored RV she calls Vanguard. “I’m not homeless, I’m houseless,” she says, driving through vast Western landscapes under spectacular skies. Read more... |
Rare Beasts review - Billie Piper as triple threatThursday, 20 May 2021
Emotions don't come in half-measures in Rare Beasts, with which Billie Piper makes a commendably edgy debut as writer-director onscreen while affording herself a stonking star part. Read more... |
Army of the Dead review - triumphant return to zombieland by director Zack SnyderWednesday, 19 May 2021
Zack Snyder’s CV includes such fantastic fare as Watchmen, 300, Man of Steel and his career-launching zombie-fest Dawn of the Dead, so who better to helm a zombies-in-Vegas heist movie? Read more... |
The Human Voice review - an intense half-hour that pulls no punchesWednesday, 19 May 2021
I wonder how many relationships have foundered during lockdown and how many have suffered the humiliation of being dumped over the phone or via social media? Read more... |
Ferry review - the making of a Dutch gangsterMonday, 17 May 2021
Success for the Belgian-Dutch crime series Undercover has led Netflix to produce an origin story for the show’s drug lord character Ferry Bouman (Frank Lammers). While this may be a dream come true for a portion of the show’s diehard fans, this formulaic movie is stalling, predictable and riddled with every gangster cliché in the book. Read more... |
The Woman in the Window review - hitching a ride with HitchSaturday, 15 May 2021
Darkest Hour may have been director Joe Wright’s finest hour, but we can say for certain that, despite its impressive cast, The Woman in the Window isn’t. Read more... |
End of Sentence review - an American father and his estranged son reconcile in IrelandSaturday, 15 May 2021
It’s not until the final moments of End of Sentence that Frank (John Hawkes) lets himself laugh – he’s swimming in the icy waters of an Irish lake - and what a relief it is to hear. Icelandic director Elfar Adalsteins’s debut feature (Sailcloth, a wordless short starring John Hurt, won several awards in 2011) is a study in family shame, masculinity and keeping things inside. Read more... |
Some Kind of Heaven review - a Florida retirement community yields its secretsThursday, 13 May 2021
In the UK, we usually get a peek inside The Villages in Florida every four years, when intrepid reporters take to their golf carts in the retirement community to test the water in presidential elections among its 132,000 residents. Their views provide a useful guide as to where the silver-haired vote stands. Read more... |
Milestone review - parable of an aging truckerMonday, 10 May 2021
Watching Milestone, a new Netflix original directed by Ivan Ayr, I was reminded of the films of the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. This story about an aging truck driver facing redundancy whilst grieving for his wife attempts the still mood and loneliness that Kiarostami favoured in his quiet epics. Read more... |
Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation review - genius dogged by disappointmentSaturday, 01 May 2021
Kindred literary spirits who overlapped in any number of ways make for riveting stuff in Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation. Filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland folds archival footage of the legendary writers together with recitations from their life and art spoken by Jim Parsons and Zach Read more... |
The Artist's Wife review - uninspired portrait of dementia in the HamptonsWednesday, 28 April 2021
“The only child I’ve ever had is you,” the artist’s wife (Lena Olin), spits at the artist, her considerably older husband (Bruce Dern), who retorts, “That was your goddamn choice so don’t blame it on me.” Read more... |
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